


no grave can hold my body down

by biblionerd07



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Implied/Referenced Torture, angel of death - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 07:29:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2459963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/pseuds/biblionerd07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky has died more than once, but he never stays that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no grave can hold my body down

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Hozier's "Work Song."

Bucky Barnes knew he was going to die. He was strapped to a table by a sadistic scientist, being stuffed full of needles and drugs and not nearly enough food. He'd lost track of how long he'd been there—had to have been at least a week, probably, but it was hard to count when there were no windows, no way to tell how time was passing, no wall to even scratch a tally mark into.

And then, all at once, he wasn't on the table. He was sitting in a chair, unbound, and the fire in his veins from every prick of the needle was gone. There was still a body strapped to the table, and he was eerily calm as he recognized his own features. There was a woman in a white dress sitting beside him, and he turned to stare at her for a moment.

“Am I dead?” He asked, because she seemed like the kind of person who'd know.

“Yes,” she told him calmly. “But you don't have to stay that way if you don't want.”

“Are you an angel?” He asked, because how was he supposed to wrap his head around the fact that he was dead? She gave him a tight smile.

“I am the angel of death,” she said quietly. “And you get a choice whether you're going to come with me or not.”

Bucky stared at her for a long time. “Why?”

“You don't want the choice?” She arched an eyebrow at him.

“Does everyone get a choice?” He didn't think it was possible. Steve's ma wouldn't have died if she'd had a choice, he knew that much—Sarah Rogers wouldn't have left her boy for the world.

“No,” she confirmed his suspicions.

“So why me?” He knew this was another hallucination. Whatever Zola was pumping into him was giving him tons of weird hallucinations.

“You just do,” she said flatly, and she seemed annoyed by his questions. “Make your choice.”

“Well.” He bit his lip. “Am I just gonna live to stay here on this table?”

“You ask an awful lot of questions for someone with very little power.” She narrowed her eyes at him and he shrugged a little.

“Just want to know what I'm signing up for.”

She was quiet for a moment, eyes closed, and then she opened her eyes and tilted her head. “I can't tell you much. But I can tell you if you live you will see your friend again.”

“Lady, I got lots of friends,” Bucky said as his pulse sped up. She had to mean Steve. Steve was the only friend worth mentioning in this kind of decision. Just thinking of Steve made him want to rush back to his body. She gave him a look like maybe she could read his thoughts and he tried to make himself stop thinking.

“He's embarking on a dangerous journey. That's all I can say.”

“Ah, that's not much.” Bucky rolled his eyes. “He's always doing something stupid.” He licked his lips. “So if I stay, I'll go home?”

“You will see him again,” she said cryptically.

Bucky sighed. “Guess that's my choice, then. If it's all the same to you, think I'll try my luck down there. Sounds like Stevie needs me.”

She looked at him for a moment, examining him almost, and then nodded. “So be it.”

He jerked awake on the table, gasping, and didn't remember the strange hallucination. Steve, in his new body, found him later that day.

 

Bucky had no idea what happened. One second he was screaming in agony, the hot blood from his arm melting the snow around him, and the next he was sitting on one of the rocks up above, feeling weightless and painless. He blinked a few times and looked around. He realized with a lurching feeling he could see his body still down in the snow.

There was a woman in white sitting beside him and he turned to examine her face. She looked pretty calm considering they were a few hundred feet in the air. With a rush, he remembered seeing her while he was strapped to Zola's table.

“Aw, shit,” he sighed. “I'm dead again?”

She rolled her eyes. “You don't live a quiet life.”

He grunted. “Do I get another choice?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Steve's gonna do something stupid, so—”

“Do not make this choice lightly,” she interrupted. He closed his mouth. She seemed angry.

“What do you mean?” He asked cautiously.

“The things that await you if you choose to go back are not pleasant.” She looked away from him. Bucky was pretty good at reading dames, if he did say so himself, and he thought maybe she was angry about whatever was going to happen to him.

“Alright.” He thought for a minute. “Are those not pleasant things gonna get me back to Steve?”

She stayed quiet a long time, looking at him seriously. “Eventually,” she said finally. Bucky commanded himself not to shrug. She seemed pretty pissed, so he needed to act like he was really thinking this through. The truth was, if it meant getting back to Steve, he didn't have to think too hard.

“It will be a long time before you see him again,” she warned softly. “A very long time.”

That did give Bucky some pause. She said it wouldn't be pleasant, and if it was going to be a long time...he thought of the table and the needles and Zola's voice and shivered. “Will it be like before?” His voice sounded childish even to his own ears. She pursed her lips.

“It will be worse.”

A little tremor went through him at that, because he couldn't imagine anything worse than that table. But Steve had come for him, on the table, and whatever happened, Steve would come for him again. She'd already said he'd see Steve again. He clasped his hands together.

“I'll go back,” he said, far less confidently than the last time he'd chosen. “I gotta get back to Steve.”

Last time, he'd gone back to his body almost immediately after making the choice. But this time, she took one of his hands and held it for a moment.

“You may regret this decision,” she told him, and wasn't that just a swell thing to hear. He pressed his lips together and took a deep breath through his nose.

“Maybe I will,” he admitted. “But if it means getting back to Steve, I have to do it.”

Suddenly, all the pain was back, and he screamed again, the woman in the white dress already fading from his mind. It didn't take long for the pain to make everything go black, so he wasn't awake when the soldiers found him and dragged him back. He couldn't regret the decision, because he didn't remember making it, but as they sawed at the stump on his shoulder, he wished he was dead.

 

“Start the electroconvulsions again,” the doctor ordered, and Bucky screamed preemptively. He had already been electrocuted more times than he could count. This time, he only went through a few minutes before he was up and off the table, sitting on a high counter. He could still see a body jolting on the table. He was dead. He knew the woman was there again before he saw her.

“You weren't kidding about the not pleasant part,” he said weakly. She looked sad this time, and she didn't laugh at his attempt at a joke.

“This is not the worst of it,” she said, and Bucky thought for a second he saw tears in her eyes. “But it's still your choice.”

Bucky ran a hand through his matted hair, growing too long because they weren't worried about keeping up his appearance. “Tell me something?” He asked. “Is Steve still alive?”

She bit her lip and looked down. “In a manner of speaking.” And that wasn't really an answer. He gave her a look and she closed her eyes. “He is currently frozen. He will eventually be discovered and thawed and will be physically unharmed.”

“Physically,” Bucky echoed. “Not mentally?”

“He will be in a different time, all alone. He will struggle.”

Bucky trembled a little as he thought of Steve being frozen. Steve hated the cold. “But then I'll find him?”

“You will be reunited,” she confirmed. She tilted her head a little. “There are terrible things to come. I wish I could—” She stopped and breathed hard through her nose.

“You can't tell me?” He guessed.

“I can't.” She bit her lip. “I will tell you...” She hesitated and he nodded to urge her on. “He has been given this choice as well, more than once. And he has always chosen to stay.”

“Yeah, course he did.” Bucky almost wanted to roll his eyes. “Steve doesn't quit.”

She narrowed her eyes. “He didn't just choose to stay for the sake of staying. You were a large factor in his decision.”

Bucky swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. How could he feel tears pricking his eyes when he was looking at his body? Wasn't he technically not a body at this point? Apparently it didn't matter; he had to bite the inside of his lip hard to keep it together.

“Did he get a choice between dying or being frozen?” He asked quietly, knowing from her face the answer before she said anything.

“Yes. He was told if he froze he would be able to save you. He chose to live through that.”

Bucky quit fighting the tears now. “Okay.” He drew the back of his hand over his nose. “Then I'll stay.”

“You're sure?” She asked, the first time she'd second-guessed him. That scared him, as did the slight sheen he saw in her eyes.

“It's gonna be really bad, isn't it?” He whispered. She looked away from his body on the table.

"He is the reason," she said. "That you get a choice. When he was given his choice the first time, he was a child. He asked what would happen to you if he chose death, and then he said you were worth living for. That is why you get the same choice."

Bucky swallowed hard. It wasn't every day you heard your best guy made sure you didn't die right away when he was a kid with scarlet fever.

“Are you sure of your choice?” She asked gently.

Bucky looked at his body, where the doctors were starting chest compressions, at the metal arm they'd attached to him, at the matted hair and bruises and welts and protruding ribs, and thought of how she said it was going to get worse. And then he thought of Steve, choosing to stay during fever after asthma attack after heart spell, never giving up, freezing alive, choosing to do it because he was going to come save Bucky again, just like always.

“I'm sure.” The words were heavy but he didn't doubt them.

She thought she was giving him a choice, letting him decide his own fate. But the thing of it was she was telling him to choose between death or Steve. And there was really no choice to that at all.


End file.
